Commercial Vehicle Hire Specialists ND Brown Opt For Ultimate Safety from Sentinel

Commercial vehicle hire and Hot Box specialists, ND Brown Ltd, is now offering enhanced safety to its broad customer base, with new award winning vehicle safety equipment from Sentinel Systems.

The company has installed Sentinel’s side-scan cyclist detection system across many of its vehicles, as well as 4-camera systems on certain larger vehicles, with digital recorders that offer all-round visibility to its customers, giving them the safest possible driving experience.

With four depots across the UK, ND Brown Ltd has a fleet of over 450 vehicles, including tippers, tipper grabs, hot box vehicles and other large HGVs from 3? to 32 tonne GVW for a wide variety of requirements. The company has a large customer base spread across the UK with many vehicles used in large cities, including London, with operations often within heavily pedestrianised or congested areas.

Mark Fernyhough, Managing Director at ND Brown Ltd commented, “Public safety is very important to us at ND Brown as we hire some large vehicles, which can often be difficult to manoeuvre due to a driver’s lack of vision or awareness of what is surrounding them. We have always had reversing cameras installed, in all of our vehicles, as standard and these have proven extremely successful in ensuring our customers can manoeuvre safely.”

He continued, “We decided to go one step further in ensuring that we are providing the ultimate safety for our clients and other road users and this is something that Sentinel was able to deliver. We have received excellent service from Sentinel throughout every process and their Director, Allan Robertson, has done everything possible to make sure that all of our requirements are met. Sentinel offered us a trial of its cyclist detection system and we were extremely impressed with the quality of the equipment and could genuinely see how effective the system is and how it can save lives.”

The company has committed to installing Sentinel’s award-winning cyclists detection system to all new vehicles added to its growing fleet, as well as retrofitting the system to many of the its existing vehicles. This will allow the company to continue to provide vehicles for use within the London area as they comply with the new CrossRail regulations* and allow drivers to operate in congested areas without posing a threat to vulnerable cyclists, pedestrians or other road users.

Designed to detect cyclists within the blind spot of the vehicle, the intelligent system will audibly warn the driver of the hazard allowing them to take caution when manoeuvring and in particular, turning left. The system can also warn the cyclist that the vehicle is turning, to ensure that every possible measure is taken to prevent an accident from happening.

Sentinel Systems’ 4-camera system has also been specified for all of ND Brown’s larger vehicles including its 32 tonne tippers and tipper grabs, as such large vehicles can often be extremely difficult to manoeuvre safely due to a driver’s lack of awareness of their surroundings. The comprehensive system will offer drivers an all-round enhanced view of outside the vehicle whilst eliminating blind spots and ultimately the likelihood of causing an accident. The system will be installed complete with Sentinel’s Mobile DVR unit to capture evidence of such incidents as an accident or theft. The DVR’s 1 Terabyte hard drive will record for over 30 days and can be extracted and easily reviewed by ND Brown’s staff, enabling them to use it in evidence in the event of an accident or a fraudulent insurance claim.

With over 30 years’ experience in the market, Sentinel Systems has developed a wide range of vehicle safety equipment including cameras, radar systems and recording units, with a team of field engineers operating across the UK delivering installations and maintenance to provide the safest solutions for commercial vehicles.